


Hesperides

by englishable



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5864887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben doesn't understand all of the Aldeeranian traditions and customs his mother tells him about, but following them still seems like the proper thing to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hesperides

...

Working from raw materials is the worst, Ben decides, because everything starts out so whole and complete already that he hates to spoil it.

Therefore orange rinds must hold their original shape, even after the fruit has been taken out, although this requires inspecting each one beforehand to decide where he’ll stick in his thumbnails. He pokes two pin-holes through an egg, watches its yoke fall out, and then he admires the clean white shell left behind. Apple peels must always come away in one curling, uninterrupted spiral, which he rearranges so that it forms a loop with no end or beginning.

“Close your eyes,” Mother instructs him. “Toss that thing back over your shoulder.”

Ben takes the long peel – golden, because it comes from a Corellian apple, which in turn comes from Father’s home planet – and dangles it above his head.

“Why?”

Mother stands beside him at their kitchen table, a feat made possible because Ben has brought himself a stool. This bowl of apples between them is meant to become a pie, although admittedly it might turn into something else – Mother is not the most punctilious of cooks. 

But she carves her apple in swift strokes, thumb balanced on the paring knife’s blade, each movement final and decisive as though she’s striking out words from a drafted speech. He has never once seen Mother cut her finger. 

“It’s something we –” she purses her lips “– it’s something people did back on Alderaan, when I was a little girl. You throw the peel and look to see if it lands in the shape of a letter.”

“What’s the letter mean?”

“I’m not sure if I remember.” Mother cores the apple with another turn of her wrist. “Oh, yes I do. It’s supposed to be somebody’s initial.”

“Well, what _kind_ of somebody?”

“Somebody you’ll meet, one day. Somebody you don’t know yet.”

That sounds an awful lot like a magic trick, or a silly myth, neither of which Ben puts much stock in – Ben who can make things fly off the high shelves with his mind, who will soon begin hearing voices coming out of darkened corners –  but then he sees that odd, far-flung expression in Mother’s eyes.

As though she’s trying to peer over a horizon, he thinks, as though she doesn’t want to look back for too long at what’s behind her. As though something bad might happen if she does.

(She’s told him other things about Alderaan, when he asks. 

There’d been a cascade so high that its falling water half-turned to mist and cloud before it reached the cliff bottom, and a rainforest where flowers could bloom all year. There’d been books – real printed books, on real paper pages – filled with poems and stories, except Mother couldn’t recall exactly how most of them ended. 

 _“Don’t be sad,”_ he’d like to tell her. _“You have me. Is that enough?”_ )

Ben squeezes his eyes shut and flings the bright, golden apple peel over his left shoulder. 

It lands on the stone floor. Mother and son turn, crouch down together to study it, tilting their heads at the same angle.

“ _‘Cherek’_?” he asks, following its curve with a finger. He’s known his aurebesh letters since forever, or thereabouts. “Or  _‘krill’_?”

“Hum. This corner looks a bit sharp, to me.” Mother points at what she means. Ben has to agree. “Could it be a ‘ _resh_ ’?”

“I don’t know anybody whose name has both those letters _.’_ ”

“Not yet.” Mother stands up to brush off her knees. “That’s the future for you – by the time you realize it’s here, it’s usually already happened.”

“That’s not fair. That means you can’t change it.”

“Wise words,” Mother says. “If only we could get the Senate to believe it. Should I make you my spokesperson at the next subcommittee hearing?”

Beneath her apron Mother wears a crisp suit, cobalt blue, in preparation for the long day, but she’s promised him they would do this and the fresh apples will spoil soon if they don’t. 

“Maybe.” Ben gathers up the golden peel, whatever it might stand for – K, or R? If it’s both, then in which order? It probably doesn’t make a difference – and then clambers onto his stool again. “Would I be able to get my own seat?”

“We’ll see.”

She rests a steadying hand on his head.

(Father does this, too. Father usually adds something about how much taller Ben has gotten since the last time they met. It’s an old joke, and they still laugh at it.)

Ben waits, trying to fix this moment in his mind before it leaves, and when Mother lifts her hand away he glances down at the apples he’s finished peeling. 

He frowns. 

Because that’s the other thing Ben dislikes about this process – how the clean white apples always seem to change color so quickly, exposed to the open air, as if they’re rotting away there in his hands. 

(And they only seem to do this when he’s not looking, which is worst of all.)  

...

**Author's Note:**

> The practice of throwing an apple peel over your shoulder and reading the initial it resembles is actually an old Dutch tradition, meant to yield somewhat more specific results, but the symbolism is so loaded that I couldn’t resist. 
> 
> I just really need Ben Solo to realize how much his parents loved and still love him, guys. It’s killing me.


End file.
